Travel Support Program
Contents
OpenStack Travel Support Program
The program's aim is to facilitate participation of key contributors to the OpenStack Design Summit covering costs for travel and accommodation. The Travel Support Program is based on the promise of Open Design. Key contributors are contributors whose presence is specifically relevant for the topics to be discussed at the Summit they're applying to. Relevance of somebody's presence is never evaluated in general ways: it's always relative to the content being discussed at the specific Summit. The OpenStack Foundation will set aside a fund to support this program. The total amount of the fund is to be divided among the key contributors.
Criteria and process
All contributors to OpenStack (developers, documentation writers, organizers of user groups around the world, Ask moderators, translators, etc) are invited to submit a request. PTLs and code reviewers also are requested to propose candidates.
- Candidates apply by filling out this online form
- Travel Selection Committee evaluates entries based on criteria stated below
- Travel Agent coordinates with key contributors.
The OpenStack Foundation will coordinate directly with the key contributors to arrange for their travel, according to the level of funds granted.
Who decides
The travel committee is comprised of 6 people total (1 Board of Director, 1 TC member, 1 person who is involved with Outreachy, 1 ambassador, 1 person from the diversity working group, and 1 Foundation staff member). The members are coopted by their peers and/or picked by the Community Managers with the objective to maximize representation of gender and geographic areas in the Travel Committee. The Committee is formed anew before each Summit.
Composition of the Committee for Barcelona 2016
- Tim Bell (Board of Director)
- Anne Gentle (TC member)
- Victoria Martinez de la Cruz (Outreachy)
- Akihiro Hasegawa (Ambassador)
- Carol Barrett (Diversity Working Group)
- David Flanders (Foundation Staff)
How the decision is made
Members of the committee vote for each candidate based on their application with votes ranging -2 to +2. PTLs who are on the Travel Committee are allowed to use +3 for strong candidates for the Design sessions. Negative votes are to be considered for people known to be disruptive to discussions, non collaborative, time wasters. Not known get 0. Votes are aggregated and a ranking is built. The ranking will not be public in order to avoid rancor and resentment. The Travel Committee will write a summary for each approved candidate highlighting the reasons for their approval (this will help future applicants in understanding what is considered valuable).
The Travel Committee submits the list with rankings to the OpenStack Foundation for building the final list. The final list will be assembled based on the individual travel costs, as estimated by the applicants. A negotiation phase may be needed between the Travel Committee and the Foundation staff. The main unknown tend to be flight costs as they're hard to finalize. Hotel costs are easy to estimate and cover by the Foundation.
How to apply
Fill in the online form. Applicants will be notified according to the deadlines below.
Deadlines for Barcelona Summit
- Week of June 1, 2016: Initial publication, start collecting applications
- August 8, 2016: Final deadline to submit applications
- August 9, 2016: Start evaluation of submissions by Travel Committee
- August 29, 2016: Notifications of approved grantees
Travel rewards
The grants will cover a combination of flights, accommodation and access pass to the Summit.
